It's been a long long week

Yep, it has really been a long week.  Today's adventures of swimming lessons and other stuff got railroaded by a toddler wee in pants, and no spare pants in the car.  Of course, the best thing to do in these circumstances is to go home and have a day off.  Monkey 4 has been watching more telly lately than I think is good for her, which is completely a reflection on how much I can manage in these solo-parenting months.  I offered to make her some fresh play-dough, I mean, who can resist nice fresh bright warm play-dough?  Neither of us.

 

Did I ever mention that I love my KitchenAid mixer?  Oh yes I do. Turns out it is excellent for making play-dough.
Recipe

• one cup of salt
• two cups of plain flour
• a couple of tablespoons of cream of tartar
• a goodly slosh of vegetable oil
• two cups of boiling water
• colour if you feel like it.  I use Queen brand food dye.

To make

1. put all ingredients except the water in the mixer bowl
2. slowly start mixing with the dough hook
3. pour in the boiling water
4. let it mix until it starts to set a bit
5. stop the mixer and use a spatula or scraper to get all the mooshy bits off the side and any dry bits that might be on the bottom of the bowl
6. at this point I changed over from the dough hook to the mixing paddle, but ymmv.
7. mix that wild yellow dough up a bit more until it is soft and warm and smooth.

 

Then play with it of course!  Mash it, poke it, roll it, cut it, ball it up, squash it out, or put it in a pot to cook on the stove.  Or if you are Monkey 4, sneak a lick of it when you think your mum isn't watching. Maybe I need to take a closer look at her diet...

 

On the way home from playgroup on Monday, Monkey 4 told me that she was making jellyfish with her fingers.  I sang her the Jellyfish song, and she was so enamoured of it that we had to sing it all the way home.  

The song goes like this

three jelly fishthree jelly fish
three jelly fiiiiiiiiiish
sitting on a rock
one jumps off (awwwwwww)

two jelly fish
two jelly fish
two jelly fiiiiiiiiiish
sitting on a rock
one jumps off (awwwwwww)

and on and on until there are no jelly fish, which is where it gets exciting because

one jumps on (yaaaaaaaaay!)

and then they all jump on (yaaaaaaaaaay!) until they start to one by one jump off again (awwwwwww).  I wasn't sure that Monkey 4 would get the gist of three jellyfish - 1 jellyfish = 2 jellyfish just from singing the song, so I thought I would make some jellyfish for her to play with.

I don't know about you, but we seem to have more magnets on our fridge than we ever put there, maybe the promotional magnets breed when we aren't looking.  I got some of those magnets, cut out some jellyfish and a rock shape, glued some felt and some yarn, had Monkey 4 choose some googly eyes and stick them on, and now every time we go to the fridge we get to sing the Jellyfish song.  Woot!